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Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci was born in 1940. He received a BA from Holy Cross College and an MFA from the University of Iowa. His work has been exhibited internationally at such places as the Venice Biennale, Documenta (Germany), the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). He has written widely for publication in October and Art Forum. He has taught at Yale, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the California Institute of the Arts, Cooper Union and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Acconci's early work made use of live activity, photographs, film, and video, creating personal spaces. His later work addressed public and social spaces and places. In 1987, the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art organized a major retrospective of Acconci's work, which was also a traveling exhibit, Vito Acconci: Domestic Trappings.

During the 1980s he invited viewers to create artwork by activating machinery that erected shelters and signs. He also turned to the creation of furniture and to prototypes of houses and gardens in the late 1980s. More recently, the artist has worked with the Architecture Association and focused on architecture and landscape design that integrates public and private space. www.acconci.com.

Cite this record

"Vito Acconci." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/vito-acconci.

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Summary

Vito Acconci (born 1940) received a BA from Holy Cross College and an MFA from the University of Iowa; his work was exhibited internationally. He wrote for October and Art Forum and taught at Yale and several art schools. His early work used live activity, photographs, film and video; in the 1980s he activated machinery that erected shelters and signs and later produced furniture and prototypes of houses and gardens; in 1987 the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art organized the traveling retrospective Vito Acconci: Domestic Trappings, and he later worked with the Architecture Association on architecture and landscape design integrating public and private space; www.acconci.com.

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Last modified 17 June 2011

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